Texas establishes public-private beach boundary after Ike

Land Office sets line defining public beach post Ike

Published 5:30 am, Monday, August 17, 2009

GALVESTON — Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson on Monday officially set a vegetation line establishing where the public beach ends and private property begins, a boundary blurred when Hurricane Ike struck a year ago.

The line will determine whether beachfront property owners whose buildings were destroyed by Ike on Sept. 13 will be able to rebuild or possibly lose their houses to the public beach.

Establishing the vegetation line will affect at least 1,000 beachfront properties on the Bolivar Peninsula, said Anne Willis, owner of Swede's Real Estate in Crystal Beach.

San Diego resident Mike McConnell, who owns a home on Bolivar, was among those in rebuilding limbo since Ike.

“I'm just thrilled,” said McConnell, 52. “I actually have property that can be built on again.”

After two years of planning and a year's labor, McConnell, a roofer, finished building his vacation rental at 1824 Redfish in Crystal Beach 16 months before Ike focused its fury on the Bolivar Peninsula. The storm swept away hundreds of houses, including McConnell's.

“It really takes the wind out of your sails when you lose everything in one day,” he said.

Vegetation recovers

Ike chewed away the shoreline, reducing his 198-foot lot to 8 feet. But beaches tend to rebuild themselves and, after checking the Texas General Land Office Web site, McConnell found that he now has 195 feet of property.

“As promised, I gave the natural line of vegetation a year to recover,” Patterson said. “In those areas where it has recovered it will be the boundary of the public beach.

“In areas where it hasn't, I've drawn the line at mean low tide plus 200 feet,” he said.

The mean low tide line is the average of all daily low tide lines over 19 years.

Patterson said beachfront property owners who find that their buildings are on the public beach as a result of the new vegetation line will be left alone unless they block beach access or pose a health or safety risk.

He said it is too early to know how many structures that are now on the beach would have to be removed or how many properties would be barred from rebuilding. Patterson said it was likely that some houses on Galveston Island would have to be removed. It is less likely that houses on the Bolivar Peninsula will have to be moved because so few structures near the beach remain standing, he said.

Lawmaker's house

One of those who may be able to rebuild his beachfront vacation house is state Rep. Wayne Christian, who helped craft a legislative amendment that ensured that he and his neighbors could rebuild.

A furor arose after it was learned the bill was especially crafted to apply only to the Bolivar Peninsula, where Christian, R-Center, has a beach house. After Gov. Rick Perry declined to veto the bill, despite a write-in campaign organized by beach access advocacy groups urging him to do so, Patterson vowed he wouldn't recognize it.

A cursory review of the new vegetation line, however, suggests that Christian may not have needed a special bill to rebuild, Patterson said.

“It looks like Wayne Christian should have waited,” Patterson said. “It looks like he took a bunch of punches he didn't have to take.”

Christian, who denied that he helped write the bill for his personal benefit, said that by setting the vegetation line Patterson had accomplished what Christian had intended to do with his amendment.

“I do appreciate him doing the right thing,” Christian said. “The whole intent of the legislation was to allow people of this devastated community to rebuild as soon as possible.”

Patterson said if any case arose in which the bill Christian helped write became an issue, he would still refuse to enforce it.